Breaking News: All Dignity Now Gone

April 27, 2005

Dear Kay,
My phone rings: “Ann.”
It’s F., clearly with news to tell. First we discuss the new uniforms which our school has somehow decided to adopt. I won’t say how F. voted, but the last bits of my hippie soul died a quiet death when the vote came down. A Child Of Mine In A School Uniform?
No, no, it isn’t the uniforms she is calling about. It is this:
Yarn at Target. You can now get yarn at Target.
You know how I marvel at the way Target anticipates my every need? February rolls around, cruise the Valentine’s department, snipsnap that’s done.
I suspect F. has hallucinated the yarn thing in a fog of preparation for a Girl Scout Troop trip to Georgia. How could this be? No way.
Under the pretense of returning plastic bin lids that were the wrong size, I head off to Target. But you know why I’m there. I have to see this to believe it.
Following F.’s precise directions, I take a left at the Mother’s Day cards (May 8, everybody! Head to Target!), veer down the Superhighway of Domestic Needs, and there, on the end of the paper plate row, is yarn.
You can get your own kit for a yoga mat tote at Target. You can go to Target, hankering to make a cat bed, and by golly you’re not going to have to modify an Isaac Mizrahi for Target poncho to do it. Hats, scarves, baby booties. All under $19.95. Needles included. With a DVD of instructions.
I slide down the Pop-Tarts aisle, out of sight of the guy stacking fake daisy topiaries. I remove the Anncam from my purse, fire it up, and discover: “Change batteries.” Rats. This being Target, I swing by the checkout counter, snag a dozen AAs, and hope I can get the picture taken before somebody sees me.
I’m waiting to check out, looking at my camera. K. walks up.
K. and F. have girls in the same Scout troop. K. says, “Ann! How funny! F. was just telling me she was going to call you about this new knitting kits–”
I grieve a moment at the fact that yarn at Target instantly makes people think of me. And worse, I realize I can’t fake the fact that I know about the yarn at Target. “Oh, I know! She did call me!” I say, as I’m standing there buying batteries for the camera in my hand.
“So . . . where is it?” she asks.
“Uh,” I say. “The yarn?”
“Well, yeah.”
Caught: in a few seconds, K. is going to figure out that I am here for the sole purpose of taking pictures of the knitting display at Target. This is probably the lowest moment in my blogging career.
I gesture widely. “Ohhhhh, F. said it was overrrrr behind there or something,” as I wave toward the swimsuit section. “Yeah, I’ll really need to go check it out,” I say lamely, wishing K.’s child would do something obnoxious and distracting the way my child would. Maybe if I shoplifted something, it would get me out of this situation. I am dying.
K. is far too gracious to let on that she has seen the Anncam. “Maybe I’ll get a project for the Girl Scout trip to Savannah,” she says. “See ya!”
I feel like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, where he’s been lowered into some superdeadly chamber and lands an inch off the radioactive floor. Don’t breathe. Move fast. I haul it back to the knitting, stand right there in the middle of the Superhighway of Domestic Needs while God and the topiary stacker watch, and I bring to you
proof of knitting at Target. Can you believe it?
Love,
Ann

40 Comments

Ann you ignorant blog slut. (That’s an old SNL reference, young’uns, and therefore not as obnoxious as would otherwise seem.)
I would have done the same. Except since I don’t live in Nashville, where apparently the Targets are the village square, I wouldn’t have been busted by anybody I knew.
These kits remind me of those Suss kits that had a very short life on the shelves of Barnes & Nobles a year ago. Ponchos and such, using ‘space-dyed exclusive Suss 100% cotton yarn’ that was, in truth, Peaches & Creme. You know I love the Peaches & Creme; I just don’t like to pay ‘exclusive’ designer prices for my dishcloth cotton.
Aren’t you glad to be exempt from the Girl Scout trip? Give Franny a shout-out from me. xoxo Kay

OK, love, I confess that you are not the first Blogger to tell me of this Teget phenom (but at least the first in the east). Was plotting a stop there this eve, so I’ll get back to you about what’s stocked at our smaller emporium. But I don’t have my camera!

i had no intention of heading to super target today to buy groceries. i had decided today would be strictly takeout and pj wearing day ALL DAY but damn, i’m off to the shower to drag my arse to target.

Thanks for really toughing it out and coming through with the photo! I’ve had a few blogging photo lows like that too, so I totally understand. It’s worth it!

mary de B
April 27, 2005 at 9:35 am

And you know some snobs pronounce it Tar-jay, like it sounds French. I just can’t say it any other way now, and I haven’t shopped at one in years.
But enough on pronunciation…
I’ve wondered about the etiquette and nitty-gritty details of blog photos! Thanks for risking all for that pic for us.

Now I am sorely tempted to blow off work and instead head to the Brooklyn Target to check out the yarn status. I have been harboring a suspicion since it opened that it doesn’t carry half the stuff that “regular” Targets have, since they figure that we won’t know the difference.

Yikes. Just yikes.
If it makes you feel any better, I was all set to photograph for blog fodder the 99-cent “learn to knit” booklet next to the trashy mags at the checkout at Shoppers Food Warehouse and was preventing from doing so only because my significant other physically restrained me.
Tee hee.

Cara–Wake up and smell the Peaches & Creme, honey! WalMart does sell yarn! In fact, they sell the actual yarn and not just prepackaged kits. They also have Lion Brand (I think–if not Lion Brand, something similar). Some of the stores have a pretty healthy selection although there is not (ahem) a lot of WOOL. The Peaches & Creme cotton is great stuff, though, if you like cotton. $1.28 a ball. $8 bucks A CONE. A POUND OF YARN for 8 bucks. Gotta love it.
When I went RUNNING over to the Target website, I found that they are selling a few of the Suss kits that didn’t go over so well at Barnes & Noble. But these kits do not appear to be the same ones as in the picture you took, Ann. So I think a trip to Target is IMPERATIVE to check this out. Research! xoxo Kay

andrea
April 27, 2005 at 10:41 am

I located these “kits” at Chicago area Target about 3 weeks ago. I thought it was put there solely to drive me crazy since I had 1 1/2 hours before picking up DD from soccer & no knitting. I thought I had entered a zone witout yarn temptation.
An aside to Cara, Wal-mart has carried yarn since I first went inside one in the 80s.

Kay, by living in Manhattan you are the only one here who doesn’t live someplace where Target is the village square! It;s about freakin’ time you can get yarn at Target. It’s one of life’s necessities, like Scope, Pampers, and Tide. Load up that shopping cart!

OK I was going to go elsewhere (that carries yarn too) to pick up things for a flight tomorrow but now I have to go to target and it’s all your fault! It’s ok though because I do have to pick up a tank to layer with one of my knit tanks that has horribly placed YOs. Wendy, I have that 99 cent learn to knit booklet too. I was trying to get some cash back from the register for bus fare and I wasn’t feeling like a snack of junk food, so I saw it and grabbed it. The book is just hilarious!

Thankfully, I look much younger than I am, and I remember when Target carried yarn much the way WalMart does now. K-Mart and Shopko used to carry it, too. In fact, the yarn I bought for my first project (a sweater which was never completed, but nevermind) came from Target. I think it was Caron. I remember walking through the aisles with an arm-load of yarn and running into a male class-mate and about dying of embarassment; this was WAY before knitting was cool, and before I was old enough to not care.

Kristy
April 27, 2005 at 1:18 pm

Ann: I have fallen in love. With the Red/Multi-Colored quilt in your found objects. I am not (by any stretch of the imagination) capable of figuring out a pattern for this delicious confection, but if you do, I would sell my favorite DPNs for the pattern.

freecia
April 27, 2005 at 2:09 pm

Thanks for the FYI. This might be a good item to keep an eye on for gifts to new knitters or non-knitting friends (enable! enable!). The price is pretty decent. Wonder how good the dvd is.
Thanks for looking out for us! I can’t believe they have a bikini kit and dog sweater… Now I have to go to Target. Crud. *I don’t need more yarn. I don’t need more yarn* Crud. *goes to look for car keys* Ohhh. purse kits. Crud. *trys to come up with a good reason for going to target other than yarn*
Knitting has its own space-time continuum that occasionally leaks into this one.

Not only did I go to target with the express purpose of seeing the yarn kits, I actually bought one.
You know, to review on my blog. That’s it. No other reason.
(Of course, by the time I get around to knitting with it Macrame will be the next big thing and target won’t carry they kits any longer.)

Well, I live two blocks away from a Target, so they barely have to restock without me noticing (sigh). I swear I’m in there once a week.
I was excited when I first saw the knit-kit display, but it didn’t last for long. The yarn wasn’t very nice, and the patterns were for silly stuff like Chihuahua sweaters. I was disappointed.
Then I went and cheered myself up by checking out the Isaac Mizrahi bedding collection! Yay Target!

One of the most exciting moments of my life was moving to LA and discovering a 2-story Target with an escalator outfitted to move your cart between floors. (It’s pathetic, I know.) I love Target and couldn’t live without it, but I have to admit that the thought of Target moving in on the yarn market scares me a little. I don’t want it to become my LYS! As long as they stick to cheap-o kits I’m fine, but if they start carrying Rowan and Debbie Bliss I’m running for the hills!

I took a trip to Target this afternoon and saw the kits for myself. I must say the packaging is pretty good … makes them quite a good gift to new knitters.
On my way out, I turned into Hancock Fabrics and found lots of discontinued Lion Brand Cotton-Ease! Thanks, Ann. If not for you, I would never enter Hancock Fabrics and I would never find these Cotton-Ease!

It WAS Walgreens, Ann. They actually advertised them in the Sunday paper!

Kathen
April 28, 2005 at 12:25 am

Are Americans embarrased by going into Tar-jay? I know a few people who talk a big talk against Wally-World, but don’t shop anywhere else. I just found out my loose-fitting, 3/4 length sleeves, hooded cotton pullover is going to cost me $64.00 if I buy the (dish-cloth) cotton yarn at my LYS. Am I crazy?

Jacinta
April 28, 2005 at 1:41 am

Being a Londoner, when in the States hubbie and I always seek out a WalMart Superstore, for all our entire toiletry needs (so cheap compared to this side of the pond). Needless to say I always end up at the ‘craft’ area, I stock up on beads, crochet needles, dress patterns (dirt cheap) Bill always calls it my annual knitting crap shop! For me its a wonderland (of mostly tact)(the Tucson store has a gun and rifle counter!!) but an essential holiday stop nonetheless, sshhh don’t tell my fellow Liberty Rowanettes….!

I’m with Julia FC…. It’s about time Target carried yarn… although I hope they carry stuff besides “kits”… I’m self-will run riot when it comes to deciding what my next project will be. Don’t need no stinkin’ kits…. Will probably check the local super target tomorrow… I’d given them up for lent because I usually get seduced by the Key Lime Macadamia Nut cookies…. and sometimes the cards section. I don’t think the suburban ones here (Te*as) have gun counters… but Oshman’s certainly does.
If it’s any consolation to you Nashville folk, the Harlot’s not gonna make it to Big D, either.

I keep getting phone calls from friends asking me if I’m going to knit the bikini. I’m starting to worry that one of those yarn kits is going to show up on my doorstep and a well-meaning but non-knitting friend will be waiting to see the finished product.

Crazy Aunt Purl and I both had similar experiences of being shamed while photographing the Tarzhay knit kits for our blogs (but at least we weren’t busted by friends, just suspicious security people). I grabbed one of the kits and slunk into a side aisle to photograph it–you and Purl are obviously much braver!

Don’t feel too bad – when I saw them in early April (while shopping for wine for my husband – wine, at Target, how crazy is that?) and I immediately stopped, pulled out my cell phone, snapped a photo and e-mailed it to my blog.
I understand exactly how you feel.

Saw the kits yesterday at Target in Ithaca, NY. I agree with what some of the other commenters have said – they are mostly very silly patterns with super-trendy yarns that you might not want to be wearing around in a year or so. The tank top is cute though, and I believe there was a pattern for a wide sash belt?
I also visited AC Moore while I was there… they have quite an extensive yarn selection. I can see the noticeable effort by Walmart to offer a representative selection of what’s out there right now (although as someone said, not much wool). They are trying. And my pocketbook appreciates their prices.

I laughed when I read that the first thing F. thought of was you… friends of mine in a different city went to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Friday(I went also, in a different city) and there is a scene which I won’t spoil for you… but there is knitting- in a quite imaginative way I might add… and both of them apparently whispered “Kristine!” to each other at the same time!
this was even more amusing, since at the movie, my bf poked me when the scene started and another 2 friends sitting with us looked over to see my reaction! lol

Cathy
May 2, 2005 at 7:57 pm

Target in Southern California has had the kits for a little while now. Having been a life long knitter, the quality of the yarn didn’t really interest me. But…for someone new to the craft…the dvd might help them to learn faster. Anything that helps someone learn-I’m all for it. I, however, miss the old yarn department that Target had back in the mid 80’s (and cross stitch, too!)…lots of Lion Brand and cotton yarn stuff back then. For a mom of 4 very little ones at the time, on a horribly small budget…it was a perfect way to keep my needles clicking away, making easily washable sweaters for my kids and baby gifts. Maybe this is their test for bringing back the full department?